For the first time in decades, Albert Brooks will make a live appearance in San Francisco.
Brooks, 77, will return to the Bay Area as a headliner for this year’s SF Sketchfest, the annual 2½-week comedy festival that began in 2002. Brooks will sit down for a Q&A with comedian and San Francisco native Kevin Pollak — a regular at the festival and a member of its advisory board — Jan. 21 at the Sydney Goldstein Theatre.
“We’re still pinching ourselves that Albert Brooks is coming,” said Sketchfest co-founder David Owen.
Brooks, who began his career by performing unusual one-man comedy bits like “The Dummy” ventriloquism spoof back when variety shows ruled the airwaves, saw his fame grow quickly through regular appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”
He made his acting debut in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976), and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as a talented if prickly TV reporter in “Broadcast News” (1987). He’s put together a wide-ranging career with appearances in more than 40 films and TV shows, and has directed and/or written such comedies “Lost in America,” “Defending Your Life” and “Mother” (co-starring Debbie Reynolds).
His more-than 50-year career as an actor, writer, director and all-around funny man was celebrated with an HBO documentary, “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life,” directed by Brooks’ best friend, Rob Reiner.
“I’d rather have Albert Brooks’ career than my own,” David Letterman says in the 2023 documentary.
Brooks, whose wife, Kimberly, is from Marin, sat down with the Bay Area News Group to talk about his upcoming trip to San Francisco, how the movie business has changed over time and the difficulties of being a creative person in the social media era. (This conversation has been edited for clarity and length)
Q: What are your favorite things to do these days?
A: I still enjoy acting. I really need to see something I feel I can make a difference with. I don’t want to play the same part. I also love writing. I wrote a novel (“2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America,” St. Martin’s Press, 2011) and I’m working on a second one. And I have been writing scripts.
Q: And now you’re coming to San Francisco.
A: Doing the event in San Francisco is sort of new for me. Rob Reiner made this documentary and we did a few of these events and they were really fun. So I’m looking forward to this because it’s a chance to get in front of audiences. That I don’t do enough.
Q: Would you want to do that more often going forward?
A: I’ll see how I feel after San Francisco. Maybe doing a series of these Q & As would be fun to do. I’m sort of anxious to see how I feel because I like being in front of people. It’s enjoyable.
Q: You spent some time doing radio early in your career and you’ve got a great voice for it. Would you ever consider podcasting with a live audience?
A: I’ve thought about it. Rob Reiner and I were talking very recently about possibly doing one. We didn’t additionally think of a live audience… But it is intriguing. It’s very intriguing to do it that way.
Q: What would your podcast look like?
A: When I think of doing a podcast, I think of it like an old-time radio show where you could do bits, you could do segments, you could have a singer on. It’d be like a variety show.
Q: A favorite quote of mine is when you went on the Marc Maron podcast and said, “I have no expectations of anyone remembering anything ever, because I just don’t care.” How much has that concept helped you in your life?
A: Immensely. Because it’s true. I can’t think of an example in my whole life where, by worrying about what someone else thought, you improved.
Let’s say you were writing something and there was a head of a studio. And you were convinced that you knew what this person liked, so you wrote for them. By the time you finish writing, consider, A, the likelihood they’d be replaced, and B, the likelihood they wouldn’t even remember what the comment was they made to you a year earlier.
So even if you try, you can’t win.
Q: Is there anyone doing comedy right now that you’re inspired by?
A: I was watching some of Nate Bargatze’s special; I was watching Anthony Jeselnik, Nikki Glaser. These people can make me laugh.
But I consider myself lucky for one reason. When I started, Johnny Carson was the only guard of the gate. If you were doing crazy stuff — which I was at the time, I was doing things the audience had never seen — so if that guy at the gate said, ‘this stinks,’ you wouldn’t be talking to me right now. But on the contrary, if that guy says, ‘oh my god,’ then you have the beginning of a career. Because that was the only opinion.
I worry about new people starting out. My daughter (Claire Brooks) is a brilliant singer/songwriter and she has to use TikTok as part of her toolset, and it breaks my heart to see young people beginning to form their artistic brain by getting beaten up too much by people sitting in their basement who could care less.
Q: People need to complain about something.
A: All social media does is make every damn thing you do seem like it’s either the end of your career or the biggest thing you’ve ever done. Everything. And who is even saying this?
In the old days, if you opened a Broadway show, you needed the New York Times. That was the opinion that kept you in business. Now almost everybody has equal footing. Because anybody can print anything and then the internet gabs will reprint it as ‘someone said,’ or, ‘audiences are saying,’ or, ‘audiences flee.’ But nobody is doing anything! Nobody is fleeing! Nobody is stunned! Nobody gives a (expletive)!
So to me, if I could say one thing, it would be, plow on. Ignore that as much as you can and keep doing what you’re doing. Because eventually, people will come to you. If you’re doing something worthwhile, you have to get through that nightmare to get to people who aren’t stunned, who aren’t fleeing, they simply like you. And it’s hard, man. It’s difficult. Opinions are difficult when you’re just starting.
It’s like a child. Nobody wants their 2-year-old to have their friends line up to criticize: ‘’I don’t think those ears are going to come in so good.’
Q: It would be the hot new social media: baby critiques!
A: And with AI’s help! AI will tell you what the baby will look like. Then you can see what plastic surgery the baby needs to have.
How about plastic surgery in the womb?
Q: That’s too funny. So how do you get anything made nowadays?
A: If you try to sell a show to a streamer, that streamer is going to have unnecessary information on every character you write. ‘Well, you know, we’ve done 2,800,000 shows and characters under 5-foot-8 don’t test that well.’ ‘Yes, I know, but this is a famous story of a short poet.’ ‘I know, but can’t we make him 5-11?’
And these aren’t hard-held opinions. Anybody’s opinion changes 45 times a day. But when the algorithms get so sophisticated with so many numbers, it’s hard to fight.
But the truth is, people get bored with their own decisions. And if everybody in the audience says, ‘I like blonde women,’ so you cast blonde women in every one of your movies, it may take five or it may take seven, but on the seventh movie they may say, ‘I’m sick of these blonde women.’ And then you’re going to have to re-do all your stuff again.
Q: What do you hope to feel when you watch movies?
A: I want to be shocked and surprised and moved. But unfortunately, because of the economics and because things cost so much, the powers that be don’t like to make mistakes. And without mistakes in any artistic or creative or journalistic field, you’re dead. You don’t grow. You don’t do something great. We’re just fulfilling an algorithm. We’re literally working for the AI man.
In my mind, art should drive the world. The world shouldn’t drive art.
Q: Albert, thank you for this. I feel inspired to be creative.
A: You should feel that way. I always tell people that I like: it is better to fail at what you love than to succeed at what they love. You’ll be a happier person if you really try to accomplish something that’s in your brain. Whether or not you accomplish it is besides the point. But if you give up on it and move to the algorithm, even if it’s a hit, you’re going to be empty. Because it’s not you.
I really believe that in my soul.